Friday, August 26, 2016

UC to Students: you're here to be challenged, not to be pampered

U. of C. tells incoming freshmen it does not support 'trigger warnings' or 'safe spaces' - Chicago Tribune:
University of Chicago Dean of Students John Ellison told incoming freshmen in a letter what they should expect on campus. "Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so-called 'trigger warnings,' we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual 'safe spaces' where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own," the letter said.
The idea of a "University" is to introduce thinking individuals to the thoughts which are new to them.   It's not to teach them how think; if they couldn't think for themselves, they shouldn't have qualified for admission.

It's not to teach them what to think: they could read books, which they may have selected because the ideas are familiar to them.   Inside their comfort zone, so to speak.

A university education is a waste of time and resources for people who need to be taught how or what to think.   Better that they go back home and marry the high-school JV quarterback or cheerleader and make beautiful babies, who hopefully will grow to be more inquisitive than their second-string parents.

The goal of a higher education is to encourage young minds to grow, to expand beyond what their basic education has taught them: the mechanics, the ABC's, math, geography, Civics ... the basics which give them the tools to evaluate new experiences, new thoughts, new opinions, new world views.

Students are deprived of a "higher education" when they are not exposed to ideas they have not heard, and viewpoints they have not considered.

At the College level, students are all about exploring, but usually it's their physical universe which has expanded.  Sex, Drugs, Rock 'n Roll.  You go gurl!    Learn how to drink and politely find a garden or a toilet to barf instead of inundating your host's Hawaiian shirt with gastric effluvium.

And too often they learn nothing from the academic courses which they (or more likely, their parents) have been saving for decades to teach them.

UC has made the bold step to actually challenge their incoming students, from the first day.
Not a challenge to their social identity; UC chooses to challenge their intellectual curiosity.

And students who don't HAVE any intellectual curiosity may soon understand that the hollowed halls of ivy aren't really where they belong.  Perhaps they're not actively in search of intellectual broadening; in which case they can go home to State U. and get their sheepskin without having to actually think.

They, the University, and the world are better off not wasting their time and ours with the pursuit of casual dalliance.

This is NOT Your Father's University!


Thursday, August 25, 2016

White Privilege vs White Guilt

State university hosts 'Stop White People' training: Report - Washington Times:

Read through the convoluted language of the opening paragraphs (I provided the indents between paragraphs), and tell me you don't understand why I am so grateful that I'm no longer sucking on the public tit.
The State University of New York (SUNY) at Binghamton reportedly hosted a training course for residential assistants on how to “stop white people.”
The course, titled “#StopWhitePeople2K16,” was listed on the university’s residential assistant training schedule for an event to give RAs an “overview of disabilities in Higher Education,” according to the Binghamton Review, the school’s student-run conservative newspaper.
(emphasis added)
Stop White People?

Geeze, Louise, the entire premise is racist.   It was conceived and implemented by 'people' who don't believe that 'white people' can be the object of racism, because of  'white privilege'.

I don't know what others may think, but I worked my way through college.  My parents could only sign  "Guaranteed Student Loan" papers on faith that I wouldn't default, because they damn sure didn't have the money to put me through college.  I caught a couple of scholarships because of my grades, but I started mowing lawns when I was 10 years old and worked weekend and vacations through high-school, and found summer jobs through college.

Judge Napolitano at Mises: Natural Law | Oath Keepers

Judge Napolitano at Mises: Natural Law | Oath Keepers:
I've never heard Napolitano speak:   I've missed out on one of the natural wonders of the universe.

Thanks to Oathkeepers  for providing this stirring speech by a jurist and a patriot whose subject is: "The natural law as a restraint against Tyranny".
From back in November, 2014, the ... video reaches deeply into philosophical queries regarding the relationship between the individual and a government. 
I won't embed the video here; credit to my source.   Go there and be prepared to spend twenty-two minutes in spellbound awe.

(Hey, I'm not joking around here!   If you're not spellbound, I will give you double your money back!)

“Making legal arms illegal is infringement.”


Alan Korwin:
... No degree of legal wrangling, court justifications, developed legal theories, codified opinions, law review articles, so-called popular opinion, telephons or other attempts to rationalize away the obvious can negate the fact that outlawing legal property is an abuse of power, plain and simple. The heinous excuse of outlawing property as a response to crime, the jihad or international threats is among the most corrupt, reprehensible and offensive. These are intolerable acts.
 If guns we have today are declared illegal , that by its very nature infringes our right to keep and bear those arms. Such action is banned -- and ultimately banned by the very firearms themselves.
 But America now has a candidate running whose very platform includes going after arms held by the people. And her followers are so poorly educated on the subject they cheer her -- and her insanely heavily armed cohorts. The irony is beyond Orwellian. It's time for the political class to understand that governement (sic) on these civil rights exceeds delegated power, and the consequences of usurpation are too high to risk. Just so we're clear: “Making legal arms illegal is infringement.” ...
This is the bare bones: go read it for the meat.


Wednesday, August 24, 2016

Oh, spare me your anti-M14 snobs

The "Everything New Is Bad" Mindset - The Firearm Blog

Frankly, I think a lot of people who seem to know what they're talking about ...  haven't a clue.

Speaking specifically about the AR16 and the M14:  I was there.

In 1969 in III corps (RSVN), First Infantry Division, we actively searched for M14 rifles to perform a very important mission:   arm "Point Men" to defend themselves.

Sure, the M16 was great for laying down a volume-of-fire, but for the guys who stalked the jungle one step at a time, trying to watch for trip wires, bunkers, snipers, spider holes, and ambushes ... it wasn't much fun to multi-task when the .556 cartridge was not worth a damn when you're shooting through dense foliage at an L-shaped ambush.   This was the duty of our point men; all volunteers, and among the bravest of us.

True fact, the M16 rounds were great for wounding the enemy, but not so great trying to beat a path through the cover and concealment (foliage) which protected the ambushers.

We looked for M14's so our guys out on the bleeding edge might have a small edge of their own; the enemy was protected against M16, which couldn't reliably break through the cover they used to protect themselves.  The NVA and VC didn't need a lot of cover when first-reaction rounds from American troops came their way.

And our point men knew it.  So we gave them M14s; 50 pounds of hardball that would go through leaves, trees and vietnamese.  (I exaggerate the weight of the M14; but if you carried one, all day and every day ... when your day began it was lighter than a feather; by the end of the day, it was heavier than a mountain.)

Maybe the M14 didn't have QUITE the penetrating power that we told them (our point men) it did, but nobody had any doubts that it was better than trying to back out of an ambush zone with nothing better than an M16 to make Charley duck and cover.   And we willingly lied to our point men; whatever it took to convince someone to lead us through the jungle.

The thing is ... our brave men who knew they were expendable booby-trap trippers also knew that we equipped them with the finest infantry rifle ever invented: the M14.

Nobody else in the company/battalion/division had The Hog.  It weighed too much, it carried awkwardly (you couldn't grip one by the 'center of balance' because it didn't have one!), and it was nearly impossible to get magazines, Level one maintenance, or even ammunition.  But these men were the eyes and ears of the squad/platoon/company/battalion.   They were BY GOD deserving of the best weapon available!

Charley opens up on you?  Shred the jungle with 20 rounds of 7.62 and let their mothers weep.

Think Charley is thinking about opening up on you?  Recon by fire with heavy metal which has been designed to push through leaves, trees and vietnamese.   Don't worry about the Ammo, Private; there's lots more where that came from

(Truth is, it was almost impossible to get M14 rifles, magazines or ammunition.  Every round the point-men fired meant that the company had to take up a collect to bribe some REMF supply officer to order in a shipment.   But we didn't tell them that.   Until the Patrol Leader  could bribe a case of 7.62 from Saigon with six bottles of Jack Daniels and introduction to a new Saigon whore, whatever those guys carried on their web-belts and Alice packs was all the 7.62 ammo in the world.)

YOU CAN MAKE  your own decision whether Point Men in Vietnam were the most naive, or most ignorant, or the bravest men in that hideous war.  What you cannot deny is that many more of us would have come home in a box except for their willingness to learn a trade which no man should become 'good at':   willfully walking into a trap, for the good of his brothers.

We gave him the best weapon we had ... the M14 7.62mm select fire "Assault Rifle" (Ptui the term! but my understanding is that it replaced the B.A.R. --- Browning Automatic Rifle) and wished them luck, and then cowered behind them in hopes that their MUCH MORE POWERFUL weapon could confuse and thin the enemy when they attacked; at least long enough that the rest of us could find cover and concealment to return a 'volume of fire' from our Poodle Shooters (which worked as well as you can expect from the lowest bidder).

Yes, this is nostalgia.  The thing is, nostalgia is the luxury of someone whose life, and the lives of his friends, have been saved by a gullible infantryman who busted up an ambush which could have / would have killed all, or most of them.

So AC97: I recognize that you are speaking as a person who looks at the question objectively.
Also, I perceive that you haven't lived your long life because someone who was armed with an M14 stood his ground for his brothers.

But if you have never had the luxury of a long life because of a brave man with an M14 who broke up an ambush purely because of his more-effective arms, I respectfully request you to STFU!




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And speaking of the M14, that thing shouldn't have even existed, let alone get adopted. Literally the only reasons that rifle is thought of positively in any way is because of nostalgia and the fact that the M16 had problems caused by cutting corners in vital areas, which have long since been solved.





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      People forget that it was withdrawn from production because the companies building them couldn't keep them shooting. It was an unreliable and inaccurate rifle much of the time. Only today, 60 years later, has it been made into a shooting machine, it never was during the Vietnam era.





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          You talking about the 16 or 14 brother? Because the same can be said about both..





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              There's a difference in that the M14 was a bad idea to begin with. Just look at all of those exposed locking surfaces. The FAL and AR 10 were (and are) more than capable of being better in every meaningful way.





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                The M14 was stopped and replaced by the M16 (then M16A1). Winchester, TRW and H&R had difficualty keeping the stocks from warping and stopping the proper function and accuracy issues. McNamara pulled the M14s plug. The M16 issues are well known and mostly came down to high level Army officers not knowing a damn thing about the new rifle.





            Tuesday, August 23, 2016

            A Public Health Approach and a Call to Action to End Gun Violence

            A Public Health Approach and a Call to Action to End Gun Violence | Observer:
            Ann Twomey is the founder and president of Health Professionals and Allied Employees (HPAE).
            When public health advocates first proposed mandatory seat belts, or restrictions on sales of tobacco, some screamed that we were taking away their freedoms.  But years of reduction in car fatalities and tobacco use and related diseases have proven the advocates correct.  We need to tackle gun violence the same way, with research, education, prevention and common-sense reforms.
            Ann,
            Tobaco, cars these are not objects which save lives.   Firearms will always be with us, and most of the people who use them to take lives are criminals who will not be daunted by any law you can get passed.   Firearms have been used more often to save lives and property than to take lives; cars and tobacco are either a great convenience or a recognized vice.   They have not 'saved lives' as often as have firearms ... in defense of owners themselves; or homes, family, property.
             To address these and other critical questions, Congress must finally restore funding to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for gun violence research, which was cut off in 1996 at the behest of gun rights advocates. We need to let the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms and Tobacco (ATF) do its job, which is maintaining a centralized database on gun sales, tracking multiple sales, and working with other federal agencies to track the use of guns in violent incidents. Much of the traditional work of the ATF has been gutted in recent years due to lobbying by the NRA. Because of NRA lobbying, we aren’t doing research that could tell us how, when, where and by whom guns are acquired and used. 
            Ann, that's a bald-faced lie, and you know it.

            The NRA pointed out that the CDC was not doing its job; the CDC had a political agenda, and was slanting its reportage to suit its agenda ... not to educate the American public or to point the way to a better understanding of the way firearms fit in the American culture.  The leaders in the CDC had already decided that the NRA was not the way they wanted America to progress, so they did everything in their power to undermine the Second Amendment rights of Americans.

            All on their own.

            They can't even blame anyone else for influence; they (CDC) took full responsibility for their political Lies, Half-Lies, Omissions and Obfuscations.

            When Congress investigated the NRA claims, they discovered that they were accurate; the CDC was violating the terms of its congressional mandate: they were not reporting the truth about guns; they were reporting a jaundiced and politically driven bias which had originated in the CDC ... not in an external agency.   That's why Congress demanded that ... while the CDC was free to research and report on any health-and-epidemiology issue they desired (which was the original charter ... NOT treating firearms as an "Epidemiological issue"), they could no longer receive federal funding for research which was deliberately slanted against civilian possession of firearms.

            The CDC brought the slashing federal funding upon it-selves, so please do not blame the whistle-blowers!

            We could test the truth of the claim that people who have guns in their homes gain protection from the weapons, rather than put family members at greater risk. We could also tell which state and local gun control measures are most effective and examine whether access to mental health services and bans on gun sales to those at risk of violent behavior would reduce incidents of gun violence.
            Ann, you twit, that's exactly what CDC was originally mandated to do, and they demonstrated that they could not be objective were unwilling to do it when the issue of firearms ownership was involved.

            Now you make this great heroic plea to allow the CDC to 'do its work', suggesting that without funding their hands are bound.

            In truth, the CDC has recently received funding from the state of California to conduct a study (completed, I believe), to prove that firearms are harmful to American Society.  They did so, and the resulting report was less anarchaic than the reports which they submitted under Federal Funding.

            I submit that the CDC has learned that biased 'scientific research reportage' is not part of a profitable future for them, at least under Federal Funding, and they are finding other funding.
            (Not that the report doesn't sway toward the results which California was looking for.  A successful prostitute, once bought, stays bought.)

            HONOR IS A SACRED thing, and once it has been compromised, it's almost impossible to regain.
            The CDC has violated its own honor.  It has proven itself not worthy of the trust which once was its shield.


            ABOUT ANN:

            Ann. I've read your resume.
            We are not swayed by your facile arguments.
            When the CDC gave up it's integrity, America quit believing it.

            There are few .. if any ... arguments you could make at this time to sway the taxpaying pubic.   Why should we support an agency which lies to us?

            Perhaps someday the CDC will be less disingenuous.  Maybe someday we can trust them to look at BOTH sides of an issue (and that won't happen as long as CDC treats the second amendment as a 'cancer'!)

            But this is not the day.
            And yours is not the persuasive argument

            And as long as you, with your thinly disguised quest for GUN CONTROL remain a spokesman for the renewed politicization of the CDC, it's unlikely that America will find it in its heart to accept the federal agency (which I, and every American, are paying for) as an agency whose reports we can trust, honor, and accept.

            Trust is easy.    You expect it from your friends.

            Trust, when violated, is nearly impossible. Your friends find it impossible.

            The mere fact that time has passed since they (CDC) last time they stabbed us in the heart is insufficient grounds for us to accept the "common-sense reforms" which you have asked of us.

            There is a crude, but appropriate, response  to the leniency which you have asked of us:

            "Pound Sand"